December 7, 2009

Non-immigrant visa officers working out of the United States Embassy in Port of Spain were being trained, up to February of this year, to refuse visas to certain groups of applicants.

Among those who had virtually no chance of getting a visa were pregnant women, women who already had a child in the US, and locals going to America for job training.

The actions of the US Embassy officials were illegal, according to an internal inspection done by the US State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The visa officers were told to follow US visa application laws.

The investigation was done over a two-week period from late January. The inspection took place shortly after former US ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Roy Austin completed his tenure.

The report, deemed ’sensitive but unclassified’, was published on the State Department’s website several months ago.

The embassy’s public affairs officer, Matthew Cassetta, told the Express that, since the report was written, State Department officials had visited and ’found that everything is functioning as it should in the consulate’.

The report detailed the daily operations of the embassy and commented on its strengths and weaknesses. The reported stated, ’Consular section management currently teaches non-immigrant visa officers to refuse visas to certain categories of applicants who should not be refused under visa law.’

It stated, ’Of special sensitivity are routine refusals for newly hired employees of known local and American companies going to the United States for training. These knee-jerk refusals have damaged relations with those companies, many of which do daily business with the embassy.’

The report found that consular management argued that applicants just out of school and/or starting first jobs ’are poor candidates for full-validity visas because they might leave those jobs and stay illegally in the US’.

’However, section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act clearly states that, ’every alien’ shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a non-immigrant status’, the investigators stated.

’Further,... if you determine an applicant is qualified under the law for a visa, that decision should apply to future trips as well. Suspicion that an alien, after admission, may be swayed to remain in the United States because of more favourable living conditions is not a sufficient ground to refuse a visa as long as the alien’s current intent is to return to a foreign residence,’ the report stated.

The inspectors stated that immigration officers should issue a visa based on an applicant’s travel intentions and not what the application might do in future.

Last week Cassetta responded to the report. He stated, ’As an internal document, the report speaks for itself and thus we must limit our comments. It is important to note that the section, of the report, on consular operations opens by stating that the embassy serves as a model for effective consular management.

’Consistent with policy, the embassy in Port of Spain and all diplomatic missions overseas are constantly reviewing procedures and practices to assure uniformity and fairness.’

He stated, ’Since the report was written, the embassy has been visited by several officials from the US State Department’s Consular Bureau. They have found that everything is functioning as it should in the consulate.’

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Email annalee@annaleedavis.com to order your copy of ON THE MAP.We accept cheques or International postal orders included with your complete return mailing address and sent to Annalee Davis. Email Annalee for the mailing address.

You may also contact Annalee to schedule a screening at your school, university, artists' collective or gallery, community group, library, place of worship, private sector entity or government department. This can include a Panel Session which allows the issues raised by the film to be constructively discussed with the Director, invited Pannellists and the audience.

*International Lens Film Series in conjunction with Ifeoma Nwankwo of the English Department, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA October 15 - 17

*3rd Annual Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, Port of Spain, Trinidad - Two Screenings at Movietowne, September 20, & at UWI, St. Augustine, September 22 2008

*The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom, September 17. Introduced by Andrea MacDonald of MAS-SAMple, Skype discussion to follow with Newcastle audience and me in Barbados, facilitated by Andrea.

* Annalee has been invited by Sydney Simmons to be his guest on Talk Yuh Talk, a radio programme on Q 100.7 on Thursday August 21st 9.00am - 10.30am. Tune in on your local radio or visit www.cbc.bb and tune in on line. The focus is On the Map as an intervention into the CSME and discussion about regional integration.

*Orlando's 1st Caribbean Film Festival 2008, Saturday, June 21, Two screenings at 1.18pm & 5.18pm followed by groupd discussion at the Valencia Community, 1800 S. Kirkman Rd., Tel (407) 299 5000. Organised by the Alliance of Guyanese Expatriates, the African American Culture Society, the Valencia Community College & the Guyanese American Culture Association of Central Florida

Podcast at the Brooklyn Museum

Annalee Davis

I work as a visual artist and currently live in St. George, Barbados.
I create works in video, installation, drawing and painting and
sometimes I build objects.
My works explore ideas about home/land, longing and belonging and
expose tensions within a larger context of a post-colonial history
and more recent post (post) -independent spaces.

Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007St. George, Barbados

Creole Chant

(complete text)

I am the complex CreoleMy context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreedOf carnival, class and comess Cognizant of ColumbusAnd the CommonwealthThat created these confused coloniesCorrectly criticized for the callous treatmentOf the Amerindian And the reconstitution Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries laterMy coronary artery cracklesWhen I think of the creatures That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collideThere is more chaos than communitySome feel like foreignersAs though uncharacteristicOf these now ex-coloniesOur natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wearLike a crest on my chestMy credentials are that I am created equallyCredible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor countryI sing the canticlesAnd practice a yogaI chantI breatheI made my jappa and wrote a creed I owned a crucifixAnd acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion ofCinnamon, coffee and cuminCocoa, cotton and caneIt is with composure and compassion thatI conceive my compatriots as compatibleWhether Cuban or Guyanese,Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatoryThat is a consanguineous conscious communityConfidently confirming a conglomerateWho speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex CreoleConfronting this crossroads of centuriesI cannot condone the corruptionNor those who configure the conflict –I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way And commemorate the cobweb we have becomeI come to youNot as a comedianNor as a clownI come to you as a coalitionOf combustible matterA civilized collectiveSometimes caustic, but never counterfeitI am a cordless creator of cultureConveying my codesTo a community that isn’t convincedOf the credit of cultural producers